'THE LAST DICTATORSHIP IN EUROPE'
BELARUS In January 2021, Larissa Itina, my Russian friend, sent me a copy of Andrei Kureichik’s play, Insulted Belarus. The translator, John Freedman, had single-handedly ensured that the play was read all over the world, in protest at the appalling violence during and after the elections there in August 2020. I suggested to David Wybrow, the artistic director of the Cockpit Theatre in London, that we do a zoom performance of the play, as part of our Dissident Voices programme. This was during the lockdown, so zoom was the best we could do.
In the event, there were about 70 people watching. At the Q&A afterwards, both Andrei and John took lots of questions from the audience, many of whom had been unaware of the rigged elections in Belarus the previous August and the terrible violence that followed, when Lukashenko brought in thugs from all over the former Soviet Union to murder, rape and torture protesters.
I followed Insulted, Belarus with a second piece by Andrei, who had fled Belarus (like so many artists and intellectuals) when it became clear that his life was in danger.
A month earlier, I had made a short video of a section of Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich’s remarkable book, Second Hand Time, which had gone viral in Belarus. I had given a public reading of the book the previous summer, at a west London church, St John the Baptist, with three marvellous actors, Andrew Rajan, Stephen Omer and Malcolm Ward. The church was packed. And Svetlana - unbelievably - was there.
Svetlana Alexievich has performed a remarkable historical and literary service, by recording and writing, in Second Hand Time, about the terrible aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union (largely ignored here), as witnessed by the testimony of its citizens.
Recently, I took part in a fund-raising evening here in London, to raise money for the families of political prisoners in Belarus, of which country Svetlana Alexievich is a citizen. Lukashenko is still there. Hundreds of people, if not thousands, have been imprisoned in terrible jails, simply for wanting a change of government. This is the man who is only clinging to power because his much more powerful neighbour, Putin, needs him. For now.
I don’t see myself as an activist. I simply believe in the freedom to vote according to one’s conscience. Belarus has been called in the past the last dictatorship in Europe. Svetlana Tikhonovskaya won the first round of the election by 70 to 30, but she was thrown out of her country and her imprisoned husband threatened with torture. Is that freedom? And now, chillingly, the families of dissidents are being targeted in Belarus. And jailed.